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The early 1920s saw the first serious attempts to mechanise horse and field artillery. They consisted merely of replacing the limber pole with an engine draught connector, then hooking gun and limber in to an ordinary commercial-type truck or tractor as was done with the mediums during World War 1. Some vehicles had FWD which enabled them to cope with bad roads but their bodies and suspensions were not sufficiently robust for heavy cross-country movement. Speed had to be kept down, especially on hard, rough roads, otherwise carriages (which had no springs) and the old wooden wheels of 4 feet 8 inch diameter (142 cm) suffered severely. To ease the strain, gun and limber wheels were sometimes fitted with solid rubber tyres but speed still had to be limited to 15 mph (24 kph).
As a partial solution to the problem, some countries exchanged their wooden wheels for heavy steel types of varying diameters and styles, and fitted them with solid rubber tyres. Carriages so equipped could be towed somewhat faster but still suffered from shock and vibration. Obviously the answer was to fit pneumatic-tyred wheels. However, some objected to pneumatic tyres because they could easily be punctured by bullet or shell splinter, but this problem was solved by the introduction of run-flat tyres which could be used for up to 50 miles while flat without further damage. In Britain the RA adopted pneumatic tyres for field gun carriages when mechanisation commenced. |
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WL Ruffell Issue 81 March 1994 |
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